By MATT MOLLOY
Transcontinental Community Newspapers
During the peewee and midget provincial hockey tournaments in Glovertown and Gander, held in April, two local hockey players suffered concussions. One was a result of excessive roughness, and the other was a result of a goal celebration. The Beacon will run a three-part series on the two athletes — Glovertown’s Abigail Hiscock and Gander’s Thomas Hedges — as well as their mothers, where the four talked about the injury, what happened moments after the injury occurred, and how the athletes are feeling today. For the third installment of the series, The Beacon will speak to a doctor about the symptoms the two athletes showed, and what they have to do to ensure a full recovery.
This is Abigail’s story.
Abigail Hiscock was born to be an athlete.
Take sports away from her and the 12-year-old Glovertown preteen loses a bit of who she is, and what makes her tick.
By all accounts, Abigail is a quiet person, but when she straps on the skates, and pulls her Glovertown Tornadoes jersey on over her shoulder pads, she transforms into a competitive hockey players who does what she can to help her team win.
During the Steele Hotels Provincial Peewee J Hockey Championships in Glovertown, held April 9-11, Abigail was involved in an incident that resulted in her being stretchered off the ice and into an awaiting ambulance.
Her minor hockey season came to an abrupt end.
On April 10, during a game against the Conception Ray Regional Renegades, Abigail suffered her first concussion.
In attendance was her mother, Terri Lynn, who remembers the incident like it was yesterday.
Unfortunately, Abigail has no recollection of what happened.
“Umm…I can’t remember,” she said, when asked about the events that led to her injury.
“She had the puck, and two guys were after her,” said Terri Lynn. “One was trying to push her, and the other one started punching her, and with that he started hitting her over the head with his stick until she fell down. That’s when she hit her head on the ice.”
Her first instinct was to get up and finish her shift.
However, the pain that she felt — a pain she’s never felt before — was too intense, and she knew there was something wrong.
Although she didn’t know then that she was concussed, she knew her injury was severe enough that the best thing she could do was remain where she was on the ice.
“I had a pain in my head,” said Abigail, “but I still wanted to get up and keep playing. However, it hurt whenever I started to move my head, and I was dizzy, and that’s when I knew I had to stay down.”
Things got even scarier for the young Tornado after that.
Although she remembers the throbbing pain she felt in her head, the moments that followed are a blank to her.
Her own mother stood and listened to what her daughter was saying, and she listened as she answered questions that were being posed to her by a nurse who attended to Abigail as she rested on the ice.
She doesn’t remember answering the questions, and the answers she gave were nowhere close to correct.
“The nurse kept asking her the date, and she kept saying it was Feb. 20. That’s her birthday, and it was the only date she could remember,” said Terri Lynn. “The nurse started to ask what month it was, and she kept saying it was Tuesday. She knew the day was Tuesday, but every time the nurse would ask her what month it was, she kept saying Tuesday.
“When she was down, all she kept saying was, ‘Boys, win it for me, win it for me. Make sure the boys win it for me.’ I had to go into their dressing to tell them that because that’s all she was concerned about.”
As Terri Lynn recalled those moments, Abigail kept her head down, and took in the information. She heard her mother talk about it before, but listening to those stories still brings back a flood of emotions. She was the centre of everyone’s concern, but she doesn’t remember being there.
“It’s really weird listening to it,” said Abigail.
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